Why does Pinterest rock for artists?Three words come to mind for me when I think about the benefits of Pinterest: Organization/ Inspiration/ Marketing. With Pinterest you can VISUALLY organize images you use for inspiration, keep yourself up to date with art trends, keep track of interesting galleries and artists, and market and share your work. In this post I'll cover just the tip of the iceberg: what the heck is Pinterest, and how do I get started in "pinning". I'll be fleshing out more about Pinterest over a few more posts so stay tuned for 3 more blog posts on the topic.

So what the heck is it and why do we need yet another social media option? Pinterest is like having a bulletin board of epic proportions stretching as far as the eye can see, full of beautifully organized visual information. But it's all contained in a perfect on-line site. You can log into Pinterest and create as many categories as you like for storing your stuff. In Pinterest speak they call these categories boards, again think of a bulletin board. In the image below you can see some of my boards/categories where I like to store my stuff. I have one marked My Artwork where I put images from my portfolio, and anyone who follows My Artwork board can repin those images to any of their boards which automatically shares the image with any of their followers. It's important to note that anything you pin is shared with anyone following you : )

You will have to create a profile to get started and create a test board or two - you can delete them later if you want. Click on your name at the top of the screen and then go to boards to start creating new boards. Once you have created some boards you can either repin other people's pins, upload images from your computer as pins or pin content directly from the web. But first thing is first let's follow some interesting people and repin some of their pins.

When you log into your new Pinterest account you can start to follow other people, they are referred to as "Pinners" (again thinking about the bulletin board idea). Now, not everyone you know is on Pinterest, this isn't facebook after all! But many galleries and interesting art magazines/blogs are on Pinterest and they are fun to follow. I'm sure youu'll find some of your friends there too. One of my favourite Pinners to follow is drawdrawdraw : http://www.pinterest.com/drawdrawdraw/ Below is an image of their boards on their profile. As you can see they pin images about every kind of drawing! As soon as you follow a Pinner such as drawdrawdraw then you will see each of their pins any time you go to your home page (you can navigate back to the home page by clicking on the red "Pinterest" word at the top of the screen).

Now let's say you aren't interested in seeing any of the other pins from drawdrawdraw except the 2D Drawings board, you simply follow just that board instead of following all boards. To unfollow all boards there is a handy Unfollow All button at the top of the page when you are looking at their profile page(the page with all of their boards on it). You can unfollow to switch to following just one or a few boards at anytime.

Ok so now you can get started and follow a bunch of people and repin anything you like onto your new boards. Try it out!

You can also add friends from Facebook and Twitter by clicking on your profile in the top corner on the page and selecting find friends from the drop down menu. At the top of the screen you'll see the options for Facebook and Twitter.

If you don't want to follow anyone right away/ or ever you can pin directly from the internet - which I'll cover in the next post OR you can pin from the generic categories that Pinterest puts other people's pins into. Just go to the little red box with the white lines at the top of the screen and click for a drop down menu of Pinterest's boards.

Stay tuned for my next post which is mind blowin'! We'll cover installing the Pin It button and becoming a content organizing wizard using Pinterest.

About the author

With a compulsion to create unique visual stories, her paintings often follow the thread of a heroine's misadventures through a surreal landscape.

She's had the pleasure of teaching at Langara College and given community workshops on painting techniques with an emphasis on watercolour, oil and acrylic. She is a board member at the Grunt gallery. Google+